Lately there has been a reinvigorated conversation around labeling something a lie. The debate boils down to a question of intent: Journalists who are most cautious with the “lie” label argue that we cannot truly know Trump’s purpose for shitting on the very concept of facts. Is he working off of misinformation? Is he exaggerating with his “Art of the Deal” tactic of “truthful hyperbole”? Is he hallucinating an anthropomorphic pumpkin that is telling him what to say? We are not inside the president’s brain, they argue, and so we cannot know.

One such journalist is Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times. On Sunday, May 27, she responded to criticism about her frequent refusal to use the word “lie” in her work with a series of tweets. “I have written stories about his lies, falsehoods, whoppers, half-truths, salesman-like stretches,” she tweeted. “The reality is that what he does can be hard to label because, as anyone who has worked for him will tell you in candor, he often thinks whatever he says is what’s real.” As far as I’m concerned, all of those euphemisms for “lies” still mean lies, and if, as Haberman asserts, he really believes them, then she should report that it is also possible that the president is out touch with reality.

Later on May 27, Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, discussed the “lie” debate. In a segment titled “All the President’s Lies,” he argued that more nuance is required. “We need to distinguish between a deflection, an exaggeration, and a straight-up lie,” Stelter said, pointing to a recent example in which Trump tweeted that “killings” in Chicago are happening “at a record pace.” “Thankfully, they’re not,” Stelter continued. “The number is on the way down. So either Trump has the wrong information, which makes this a falsehood, or he’s lying. Look, it’s bad either way, but we need to recognize the differences.”

This, too, is missing the point.

As the leader of the country, Trump is the core source for our perception of the state of the union. Once he took office, his abusive relationship with the truth came with the official seal of the White House, and that is of crucial importance. The Trump administration is now waging an unprecedented campaign of disinformation on the American people. The president of the United States is working to undermine our shared foundation of truth so that we have no choice but to accept his version of reality.

Trump himself has reportedly admitted that this is his aim. On stage at the Deadline Club Awards Dinner on May 21, 60 Minutes host Leslie Stahl told PBS Newshour anchor Julie Woodruff that Trump told her he undermines the press so that the public will have no grasp on what is true. During an informal meeting with then candidate Trump in 2016, Stahl said, she asked Trump why he was constantly attacking the media. "He said, 'You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you,’” she told Woodruff. If this is true, and those are Trump’s intentions, the endgame is to deprive journalism of any value whatsoever.

Then, on Saturday, May 26, the White House sent Matthew Pottinger, senior director for Asian affairs for the National Security Council, to brief the press. Speaking via conference call to reporters on background (which means they couldn’t use his name in their stories about the call), Pottinger told journalists that a meeting with North Korea, which had been planned for June 12, would not take place. “On Thursday, for example, a senior White House official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed," The New York Times wrote in its report on the call. Shortly after the piece was published, Trump claimed that Pottinger didn’t exist.

“The Failing @nytimes quotes ‘a senior White House official,’ who doesn’t exist, as saying ‘even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed,’” Trump wrote on Twitter. “WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.” Except Pottinger is 100% a real person, whose meeting with reporters was arranged by his administration. There are few examples of gaslighting more obvious than this.

As Stelter discussed with CNN contributor Joan Walsh during the aforementioned segment, there is concern that all of the quibbling about the word “lie” comes down to preserving access. This was apparent after the White House Correspondents Dinner attendees’ performative outrage over Michelle Wolf’s comedy set. But acting as if jokes about the press secretary’s role in lying to the American people is a gender-based insult when the president himself has called women dogs and fat pigs is an intellectually dishonest move, intended only to appease those whom it ostensibly defends. However, there is a more pressing issue of performance at play, and it is the performance of objectivity. In order to avoid claims of bias, many members of the press are bending over backward to construct an outward appearance of being fair — but that’s not journalism. Actually, overcorrecting to even out the scales out for appearance’s sake only leads to more distortion.

As I tweeted to Haberman, “If the word ‘lie’ isn't appropriate, then there needs to be a line after every ‘falsehood’ stating the fact that this White House is waging an unprecedented disinformation campaign intended to erode our shared foundation of truth.” She responded, “You got me there.”

Journalists must work to help the public make sense of this great American dumpster fire, and a part of doing that is centering the conversation around the White House’s conflicting versions of reality. On the same May 27 edition of Reliable Sources that featured the “All the President’s Lies” segment, Stelter convened a panel including Daniel Dale, a reporter tasked with fact-checking all of Trump’s words for the Toronto Star, who made a crucial point: “This is a central feature of his presidency, the incessant dishonesty, and I think it’s still too often treated as a sideshow rather than the show, rather than a central story.”

Much of Trump’s war on the truth appears to be based in exploiting widespread media illiteracy among the citizenry. Journalism is not about striving to appear fair, but maintaining a rigorous objectivity for the purpose of serving the public. The ultimate allegiance of the press is to our fellow citizens. It is crucial that journalists do a better job at explaining our purpose and be radically transparent with all editorial decision-making. That means calling a lie a lie, and if we don’t, then fully providing readers with the reason why the word “lie” is not appropriate, along with context for understanding this administration’s abusive relationship with the truth.

As a whole, journalists are routinely failing to uphold and communicate their utmost duty: to empower citizens with the information needed to hold those in power accountable. Our current moment is often likened to George Orwell’s 1984. We’re not quite at the rat-torture stage, but we’re getting there. If you’ve read the book, surely you recall this scene: The protagonist, Winston, is being tortured with a rodent contraption that’s been fastened over his head. O’Brien, a government official so notorious he is known only by one name, like Cher, tells him to say that two plus two equals five After enough pain has been inflicted, Winston relents, but it’s not enough for his tormentor. O’Brien doesn’t merely want Winston to say that two plus two equals five; he requires him to really believe it. The carnage will continue until he is beaten so far into submission that he surrenders total obedience to government-sanctioned reality.

Authoritarianism works to corrode our shared foundation of truth, pushing us to a point where we so doubt our own sanity, it becomes too much of a chore to even care what is true. Such is the goal of the Trump administration: to bombard us with so many conflicting versions of reality that we throw our hands in the air and give up on being certain about anything at all. The falsehoods, whoppers, and salesman-like stretches all come down to this: Without the truth, we have no foundation from which to resist.